specialty coffee retailer asked me to contribute to this year’s “a day in the life of a roaster” article. basically they ask 3 roasters to write about what they do during the day to give the retailers a better idea of what is going on with the coffee roasters. i guess i don’t really know how it is with a lot of retailers, but i would think that if you’re in the business of selling coffee, you’d already have a pretty good idea of what your roaster does. anyway, here’s my portion of the article for anyone who might be interested

7:00 am
I arrive at work, fire up the roaster and do a quick survey of the inventory on the floor. As the roaster warms up, I set up the first few roasts: Colombia Supremo from a cooperative in Huila. As the green beans climb up lift, I head into the cupping room and pour myself two shots of espresso. One of the nice things about roasting is that my day begins before anyone else comes in to the office. Things haven’t had a chance to get hectic; it’s just me, the jet engine sounds of the roaster, and the beans.

8:00 am
Our Production Manager Ryan and his crew (Jonathan, Katie, and Tim), show up and get to work filling valve bags, calling out coffees as we start to run low. One of the trickiest things about being a roaster is making sure that there is enough coffee available to fill the customers’ orders, while taking care not to have coffee that is going to get stale. Freshness is such an important aspect of the specialty coffee industry, and it is the responsibility of the roaster to make sure that the customer gets the freshest product available.

10:00 am
Things are in full swing now. Customer orders are rolling in and the blenders and baggers are working frantically to get the coffee ready for orders that we’ll be shipping out by the end of the day. Fresew has the local deliveries all packed up in the van and starts out to visit our customers within driving distance.

11:00 am
I pass the roasting duties over to Joe, who will cover for me while I take a break for lunch. I’ve asked Joe to handle the main production roasting for the afternoon so that I can concentrate on roasting some green samples for Peter, our Director of Coffee. We also have a visitor from one of our newest customers, Aaron Ultimo of Murky Coffee, visiting and I’ll be cupping with him.

12:00 noon
Coming back from my break I roast for another hour, while Joe take his lunch. One of the great things about my job is the teamwork aspect. No matter what needs to be done, everyone is willing to pitch in to make sure that we handle any situation promptly.

1:00 pm
I start working with the sample roaster, a small San Franciscan. This is where one of the most crucial operations in the company happens. The roasting of green bean samples and the cupping of those samples determines what coffees will be purchased, roasted, and offered to our customers. Each small batch has to be roasted to perfection so that it can be properly analyzed for flavor, body, aftertaste, and defects. For the next two hours I’ll be carefully watching, smelling, and listening to these beans as I try to bring out the characteristics that will tell us is the beans are something that we would like to carry.

3:00 pm
The cupping room is where some of the most important decisions in our company are made. The way that coffees perform during the cuppings tell us a lot about how we should roast the coffee, where we can use the coffee in blends, and how it might perform in the espresso machine. Another part of the cupping room experience lets us share our passion for coffee with our customers and with the public. Today Peter and I are cupping with Aaron from Murky and discussing how some new additions to our coffee line-up, a Fair Trade Organic Bolivia and a Rwanda. The Bolivia provides lots of sweetness, along with a juicy acidity and notes of cherry. The Rwanda is a bit wilder, with hints of grapefruit and lemon. Peter shares with us some of the background of how we came into these coffees, what we selected them for, and how to approach introducing these to others.

4:00 pm
Before leaving, I take a quick look at the production floor, touch base with Ryan and Joe to make sure everything is going well, get a glimpse of what my day tomorrow will be like and head home with the smell of coffee lingering in my jumpsuit.

mark mothersbaugh is bringing his artwork to the temple ball gallery in carrboro.

it will be on display from march 11th until april 8th as a part of the beautiful mutants 2005 tour.

hot diggity damn.

special thanks to jonathan blackwell for bringing this to my attention

shot and killed himself last night in his Aspen home. He was 67 years old.

i really wanted to see the life acquatic with steve zissou before it left theaters. according to movie minder, it’s already gone.

i hate it when crap like that happens

i don’t think i’ve had more comments coming in on any other post to my blog than the one about the guy with the skin. it will eventually just migrate off of the front page, and then people will be happy to read my blog again. it does kid of give you the willies though.

in an attempt to push that little puppy down a bit farther…

i’ve updated my wish list…

i need to get boxes for my comic books. they are getting out of hand.

last night corey and i went to taverna agora to celebrate valentine’s day. we weren’t able to do anything on valenine’s day proper because she had to work for the town of chapel hill. so we decided we would go out last night. the food was really good. we got something that was unassumingly big: two appetizer plates and a bottle of wine. considering that we didn’t really start eating until fairly late (about 9 pm) we thought we were going to be starving and just ravenously devour the food, but we found ourselves feeling very full toward the end of the meal, and everything was really tasty.

our original plan was to go to casa carbone, a family run italian place just down the street from taverna agora, but i had forgotten the gift certificate that i had for them, and so we opted to do something else.

and in an effort to rid the page of fleshy’s picture even sooner, i found this on the gingerbox forum:

Bad Ideas Tested by Me:
-showing my dad that “everytime you masterbate god kills a kitten” image on the internet, going to my bed room, dad busting in screaming “GOD HOW MANY LIONS HAVE YOU KILLED IN THERE”

according to thisnews article, starbucks and jim beam are going to start making a coffee liqueur to be sold in restaurants, bars and retail outlets…but unfortunately NOT at starbucks retail stores. probably has something to do with the fact that they’d have to have pimply faced teenagers serving loudmouthed drunkards…a non pretty combination.

Preparing to take the roaster off the truck

Originally uploaded by blinkingline.

this week we started setting up our new roaster from renegade roasters. it’s a 60 k machine, basically allowing us to double our crrent output using both this new roaster and our old roure erc-60. it’s going to be a fun time trying to get this thing to work.

apparently on oprah yesterday there was a guy who at one point weighed over 700 pounds. he then took a turn in his life when the doctors told him he might lose his leg. my question is, why would it matter to him if his leg fell off? he probably hasn’t seen it in years.

anyway, he finally gets thin. only one problem:

TOO MUCH FREAKIN’ SKIN!

so he goes to a surgeon, gets something like 3 feet of skin cut out, you know, so the bacteria will stop building up in all his folds and creating a stench not unlike satan’s diarrhea.

ps-this was posted from city beverage. free wi-fi is a good thing.

i’ve been getting into a lot of warren ellis’ books lately, mainly as a result of reading his crazy comic series transmetropolitan. the beauty of trans met is that it basically allows ellis to sort of project himself int a role as a futursisticgonzo journalist.

he answers the question “where do your ideas come from?” in the following manner:

Here’s the deal. I flood my poor ageing head with information. Any information. Lots of it. And I let it all slosh around in the back of my brain, in the part normal people use for remembering bills, thinking about sex and making appointments to wash the dishes.

That’s how it works.